Eleventh-graders Anna Moran (left) and Monserrat Morales, both 16, did a science experiment at Sweetwater High School involving pressure and gases.

NATIONAL CITY – Wes Braddock is in his first year as principal at Sweetwater High School, but he's not a newcomer to the campus at 30th and Highland in National City. It seems that no one at Sweetwater is.

Braddock taught there in the early 1990s before becoming an administrator at Sweetwater Union High School District headquarters and other district schools. At least nine of his teachers are Sweetwater High alumni. His secretary is a Sweetwater alumna. The ASB financial secretary, the assistant principal's secretary, a library assistant, a technology assistant and an instructional aide are also returned alumni.

People maintain strong ties to Sweetwater through a far-flung yet close-knit alumni community. There are numerous alumni who send children and then grandchildren to the school. And Sweetwater enjoys a special relationship with National City because of the community's status as one of a disappearing breed in booming San Diego County, the one-high-school city.

Some of the veterans on the school staff say that the je ne sais quoi that makes Sweetwater special has been flagging a bit in recent years despite improved academics, increasing enrollment and upgrades such as a new science wing.

Braddock wants to give it a booster shot tomorrow with what he hopes will be a new tradition, an open house. He's not out to reinvent Sweetwater. Instead he's trading heavily on community spirit and history to draw people to campus on a non-football weekend.

There's history aplenty. Sweetwater opened in 1922. It's South County's oldest high school and one of the oldest in the county.

Tomorrow's event, known as "SUHI Lives," (SUHI is a contraction of Sweetwater Union High School, the school's original name) will include performances by school clubs, campus tours, opportunities to meet teachers and administrators and a club row of tables set up by student groups.

SUHI Lives

What: An open house for the National City community at Sweetwater High School. The day's schedule includes performances by the school band, ballet folklorico group, step dance troupe, the JROTC unit and cheerleaders. Extracurricular groups will set up tables on a club row for visitors.

When: Saturday, Jan. 29, 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Where: Sweetwater High School, 2900 Highland Ave., National City

Admission: Free

Transportation: National City Transit is offering free service on its 601, 602 and 603 bus routes to riders with a flier for the "SUHI Lives" event.

Braddock is using his pulpit as National City's academic sheriff to declare not that there's a new boss in town, but that what the locals call "old SUHI" is still alive.

Don Rice, class of 1948, used two fingers to stitch together a large part of the tapestry of the Sweetwater High tradition.

For years, he'd peck away at the keys of a typewriter from his quadriplegic's wheelchair, adding to the list of alumni for whom he and his wife gathered names, addresses and telephone numbers. Etta Bell Rose said her former husband, who died four years ago, typed 10,000 alumni names.

The list has been a town crier's tool to inform the Sweetwater community of events such as the annual alumni picnic, homecoming, triumphs on the football field, death announcements or calls to help alumni in need.

Alumni generosity may soon bring the school some improvements. Olympic gold medalist Gail Devers, perhaps the school's most famous alumna, has pledged to help raise money for a $1.2 million track for the school. And two years ago former biology teacher William Stewart pledged to donate $2 million or more to the school for new equipment for the school's recently rebuilt science wing.

NANCEE E. LEWIS / Union-Tribune

Students were let out after classes Wednesday. The campus was built in 1922, then rebuilt in '50s.

The alumni list is now an Excel spreadsheet maintained by Alma Graham, executive director of the Sweetwater Alumni Association. She has continued the work of Don Rice and Etta Bell Rose, and the list has grown to 25,000 names.

The new names, the address changes and the death notices come in so fast that Graham has had to host data entry party weekends at her home. Last year she opened her home for a weekend, and visitors dropped in to do a shift on one of the eight computers hooked up in her living room to enter information from scraps of paper into the database.

She has posted messages when family members request thoughts and prayers for a Sweetwater alumnus that is on his deathbed. And when someone dies, she sends out e-mails with a message line reading: "The lamp grows dim," a reference to the alma mater's first line of "Our lamp glows bright."

There's a loyalty to school among veteran teachers everywhere that can border on chauvinism. Sweetwater's teachers talk not just about their school but about their affection for the surrounding city it serves, and sometimes their missionary zeal for teaching children who are ethnic minorities, low-income and non-English-speaking.

Teachers sending e-mails for this article wrote, "By far the SUHI community courtesy far exceeds expectations compared to other campuses'," "There is no other school that I would think about teaching at," and "It was a foregone conclusion that I would return someday to teach here."

Sonia Morelos, class of 1980 and now a math teacher at Sweetwater High, joined the chorus with a message stating, "I always knew I would end up here."

Her route was circuitous. She left for UC Santa Barbara hoping to become an engineer. But she found that Sweetwater hadn't prepared her for the rigor of engineering school, and she dropped out.

She later enrolled at UCSD to become a math teacher so she could help Sweetwater students better prepare for college. She said she's part of a movement of teachers with higher expectations for this generation of Sweetwater students.

It's a challenging environment. The school sits atop a state highway, and the scenery at 30th and Highland includes an SDG&E substation and a billboard that carries a Spanish-language beer advertisement.

Sweetwater has high percentages of Latinos, low-income students and non-English-speakers, and the school hasn't escaped the strong correlation those factors have with low test scores.

Sweetwater High has improved its academic rating more than any other high school in the county since the state launched its academic index based on test scores in 1999, but it's still among the lower-ranked high schools in the county.

Sweetwater High has recently received about $20 million in construction that has brought it a renovated science wing, another renovated classroom building and a new gymnasium. But even with the construction, there was a community controversy over why a gym was built before academic buildings got upgrades.

Braddock said the overcrowding evident in past years has been alleviated now that construction is done. But the school already has about 2,600 students and projections are for enrollment to grow to about 3,250 by 2008. The school board had considered calling for a second high school in the city, but the district couldn't find a suitable and affordable site.

The district has sent out thousands of SUHI Lives fliers to those future students at the city's elementary and middle schools. Crowded or not, Sweetwater wants to be National City's school.

Georgia Wapnowski, class of 1964, the principal's secretary and an organizer of SUHI Lives, said, "We're just trying to generate more spirit in the community, and helping the students want to come here instead of going someplace else."